


but I will hold as long as you like

by roachpatrol



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Body Horror, Domestic Violence, F/M, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 12:10:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6153310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roachpatrol/pseuds/roachpatrol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Is he frightened of me?” she asks abruptly, impolitely, when the secretary finds her still in the courtyard, lopping the blooms off of rosebushes with her sword.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but I will hold as long as you like

**Author's Note:**

> But you saw no fault, no cracks in my heart  
> And you knelt beside, my hope torn apart...

 

It is the first real fight of their married life; before, Maia had yielded to her where he could, and asked her indulgence where he couldn’t. But in this instance he is implacable, and she is infuriated. She is to be escorted, not just in visits out to the markets of the wider city, but about the corridors of the Untheileneise court itself. As if she hadn’t navigated these treacherous halls since she was in short skirts! As if she were as fresh to this maze of knives and poison as Edrehasivar VII himself, just come tripping off his airship’s gangplank. She needs a  _ guard. _

 

“We are not a child,” Csethiro bites out. “We refuse to be  _ treated _ as one.”

 

“Yes, we know,” Maia snaps back, tired,  _ angry _ , drawing to his full Drazhada height to stand over her, “and so we wonder as to why you are  _ acting  _ like one—”

 

Csethiro slaps him. The step forward, the open palm, the ringing crack of it: she has seen the maneuver performed countless times, by countless women, for countless reasons. Even in this does the court have a tradition, a proper way, even in this is her disapproval circumscribed. An openhand slap shocks, it humiliates, it draws the attention. It does not injure. 

 

Maia, however, is not of the court. He does not step back. He does not touch his white fingers to the livid red bloom— the strife-blossom, as bad poets liked to call the thing, discord’s rose— laid high on his pale cheek, he does not turn on his heel to recover his dignity in private. 

 

The emperor’s knees hit the ground with a dull thump, and his arms come up to ward his face. His slate grey fingers tremble, half-clawed, and his ice grey eyes stare up at her from behind them with an animal’s terror, or a child’s. The mark on his cheek is a hint of plum shadow, where it shows at all.

 

“ _ Please,”  _ he says, high and hoarse, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, thou’rt right, thou know’st best, I’m sorry! I won’t do it again, I’m  _ sorry. _ ”

 

Csethiro has a bare moment for shock to drown in an acidic flood of horror before Beshelar has her arm in an iron grip, and twists it up behind her back. She remembers that Maia is nearly five years her junior. She remembers that he has spent his life in exile, under his cousin’s heel, this disfavored half-blood goblin child, and that he never talks of his life before the court if he can help it, and when he can’t, when he is forced to admit that he cannot yet hunt, or ride, or dance, or carry a conversation, his ears fold back, and his shoulders tuck up, and he is ashamed. 

 

The next instant she is wrenched out of the room. Beshelar, snarling like a pride of lions, nearly  _ throws _ her out into the hall, and when she’s got her balance and turned around he’s already closing the door on her. The look he gives her through the narrowing crack is of a contempt so profound, so viciously hateful, that it presses her to the far wall. The shame of it sparks tears from her eyes so hot it feels as if they should peel the flesh from her face. 

 

She has admired Beshelar from the very first sight of him. He’s a true soldier: dignified, powerful, clean and crisp and straight as a blade. Honorable and true in the grandest, oldest style, as if stepped from legend. Should she have been born male she would have aspired to become a man just like him. Due to the misfortune of her sex she has had to content herself with a certain amount of interpretation. Of adaptation. 

 

No interpretation needs be made for this. She has done wrong. The swordsman that raises hand against those sworn to his— to  _ her—  _ protection is no better than a thug. No better than a mad dog with its master’s flesh between its teeth. 

 

She slinks off, her face burning, her hand burning, her ears low enough for her earrings to catch against her shoulders. Had she a tail, she would have tucked it to her belly. 

 

_ Thou’rt surely no child, Csethiro Ceredar, thour’t grown to manhood!  _ she thinks to herself bitterly _. And does it not delight? And do you not comport yourself as impeccably as any alehouse rowdy, stumbled home to assert himself upon the body of his spouse? _

 

Sleep does not come easily to her, that night, and what little she manages is riddled with bad dreams. Osmer Nelar— a man she has never met in person, and never wishes to—comes to her in those dreams, a grinning blur. He’s holding her husband’s severed head, his fingers sunk into the dark meat of the throat. 

 

“Look here, girl,” he coaxes. “Like this. Just like this. He’s not even real, you know.” Maia’s head weeps when she takes it from his cousin. Her fingers find the cunning, clockwork levers inside his neck. 

 

“Anything you want,” Maia’s head promises her, when she presses the levers. “Anything you want.” His eyes are wide and silver and frightened. “Anything you want.” 

 

“I don’t want this,” she says to Osmer Nelar, who laughs at her, knowing it for a lie. 

 

She does not see her husband the next day, or the day after that. During their long engagement, it was not uncommon to go a week or more between encounters. Since the marriage they have become somewhat more familiar. 

 

But he does not meet her for lunch. He works through dinners. His morning meal has always been his own, and she does not dare to face the disapproval of Beshelar and Csevet  _ both _ to trespass on that jealously-guarded hour. 

 

He does not see her for a week. She writes a dozen missives, sends none, and sits in the autumn sunlight of her private garden, feeling like a particularly woeful ghost.

 

She swallows her pride—  _ as if thou hast any left to choke on!  _ she tells herself sternly— and sends for Mer Aisava, at his convenience. 

 

“Is he frightened of me?” she asks abruptly, impolitely, when the secretary finds her still in the courtyard, lopping the blooms off of rosebushes with her sword.

 

Mer Aisava has apparently retained the courier’s trick of saying  _ yes, you idiot _ , with just the ears, while the face holds nothing but a polite attentiveness, and Csethiro can feel herself blushing hotly. She twists the hilt of her blade in her fingers. 

 

“You are aware that the very question is impolitic, Dach’osmerrem Drazharan, to say nothing of any hypothetical answer,” Csevet says carefully. 

 

“Yes,” she concedes. “Yes. It was ill considered. We just— it’s only that—” she doesn’t know what to say.  _ I’m sorry  _ is not enough, and furthermore not what you tell your husband’s secretary. 

 

Csevet looks around the small garden, and at the quantity of rose blossoms separated from their stems. 

 

Csethiro says, “We would make amends.” She toes at a wilting blossom. “We would very much like to know what might— what action or offering might be most appropriate. At this juncture.”

 

“Never hitting him again would be a start, Dach’osmerrem Drazharan,” Csevet says, and she gives him a sharp look.

 

“Well, consider such a trifling accomplishment managed!” she cries, exasperated, “At this rate we won’t so much as occupy the same  _ room  _ as our husband until we’re both laid into the Ulimeire!”

 

Csevet’s mouth twitches at the corner, and his eyes are a trifle warmer when she meets them. 

 

“We will see what meetings may be arranged,” Csevet says. “But we regret that we cannot execute an apology on your behalf, Dach’osmerrem Drazharan.”

 

“Any opportunity for us to tender it ourself will do nicely, thank you, Mer Aisava.” She sits back down on her bench. “You may go.”

 

He nods, bows, exits. Csethiro polishes rose sap from her sword very slowly and carefully, and tries not to feel viciously jealous of everyone who is a better friend to her husband than she’s managed to be. 

 

The next morning, as she is unenthusiastically nibbling at a slice of apricot toast, a small and nervous page boy comes into her dining quarters, bows, hands her an envelope, and sees herself out. The envelope is addressed to her in Csevet’s beautiful hand, and the missive inside tells her,  _ Tortoise Room, eleven of the clock, today. _

 

The Emperor is indeed afraid of her. When she enters the room, Maia’s ears flatten right back to his skull and he rises from his chair all in a startled burst, then freezes uncertainly. 

 

Beshelar’s disapproval of her somehow manages to intensify. Even Cala is frowning, in his distant way. 

 

She goes to both knees before the Emperor and holds out her sword: sheathed, the polished leather of the sword belt trailing limply to the floor. 

 

“Serenity,” she says. “I have done you a grievous wrong. I offer you the blade I am no longer worthy of: an I ever raise hand against you, I beg you use it to chop off the offending article, and so also my head.”

 

Cala snorts. Beshelar’s icy stormfront of disdain has lessened, slightly. He would recognize the abasement of a warrior before their liege, however clumsily performed. 

 

Her husband says, very carefully, “Dach’osmin Drazharan, we would very much prefer not to chop any parts of you off.”

 

“ _ Nevertheless _ ,” Csethiro says fiercely, glaring up at him. Then, remembering herself, she fixes her gaze back on the floor. Her ears burn, and she wishes passionately that she weren’t so tremendously awful at apologies. Or that Beshelar would at  _ least  _ come throw her out of the room again.

 

The Emperor makes a small, exasperated sound in the back of his throat, and takes the sword out of her hands. He holds it as if it were liable to bite him, or explode, and she can see all the clever little gears turning behind his silver eyes. 

 

“I confess I do not have knowledge sufficient to employ _ any _ of the weapons thou hast granted me, Csethiro,” he finally says. “Might I impose upon thee for instruction?”

 

Edrehasivar the Bridge-builder. She could weep for the sweet relief of it. Of him.

  
“I am thine,” she promises her husband. When he reaches a hand down to help her rise, she takes it. 

**Author's Note:**

> The ghosts that we knew made us black and all blue  
> But we'll live a long life  
> And the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view  
> And we'll live a long life...  
> —Mumford & Sons, 'Ghosts That We Knew'


End file.
